The Shadows
by Sparttan117MC
Summary: The mayor is trying to get the Mammal Inclusion Initiative started in some of the poorer sections of Zootopia. However, many of the gangs that have made their homes there are reluctant to release their grasp yet. With only so many police, there simply aren't enough cops for the job. Fed up with the abuse the gangs have given them, some citizens take justice into their own paws.
1. Chapter 1

Jason Salotor walked into the door of Cinerius Auto Works in the Downtown District near the northern section of the biome wall separating the Rainforest District with the Downtown dsitrict, just barely on time as his boss Joe Cinerius, a middle aged koala, watched disapprovingly from behind the counter. After yet another near sleepless night in the thinly walled Grand Pangolin Arms, which was the apartment that Jason lived in, the scowl from the koala only dampened his mood further. With drooping shoulders, the raccoon he slowly walked towards the back room to see what had come into the shop that he needed to fix.

"Why're you always comin' in just before you're supposed to be here?" the Koala inquired with his strong New Jersey accent. "You ain't never gonna get anywhere just slumpin' around."

"I didn't get any sleep. Bucky and Pronk were screaming all night long again," Jason explained as he looked around the shop at all of the cars that came in.

The closest one was a class D police cruiser, belonging to a fox police officer, that needed a simple oil and bumper change as well as a check over of the rest of the car after it had recently been in an accident according to the dry erase board that listed each vehicle's needs. The next slot over had a class C hummer, belonging to a pair of arctic wolves, that had popped its two front tires and proceed to smash into another vehicle, requiring a new bumper, hood, engine block, axel, and two more wheels. In the last slot, there was a class A car belonging to the elephant who had been hit while waiting for the left turn light to come on. The third car required only a replacement front bumper and front left tire due to its massive stature. Deciding to start off simple, Jason stuck a car jack under the police cruiser and raised it about eighteen inches above the ground before starting the engine.

Starting with the bumper change, Jason prodded the front of the vehicle with his left paw to see how bad the damage was. The bumper had a fair bit of wiggle in it, although it didn't appear to have been a bad crash. Federal safety regulations required the entire car to be in top condition to be used, and the car's bumper had arrived that night, so Jason unclipped the old bumper and clipped in the new one.

The raccoon let the engine run for five minutes before turning it back off to let it warm up. He stuck an oil pan under the plug that sealed the oil, letting all of the old oil drain into the pan that he had lined with a sheet of plastic. The fact that it was the size of car that Jason would have if he could afford one made it easier as the car was designed for a mammal his size.

As Jason changed the oil and filter on the cruiser, he thought about the fox who had dropped the car off. He had recently heard about the first fox officer getting a diploma from the Zootopia Police Academy, but had thought that it was just a political move by the mayor to endorse his mammal inclusion initiative, not that he had thought the officer didn't have what it took, but possibly was more for show than other officers. The fox that had showed up at the Auto shop did indeed look like the one in the newspaper. He was a red fox, the largest species of fox, who had been wearing an everyday patrol uniform, complete with a taser and tranquilizer pistol, both of which had remained in their respective holsters. Despite this, the sight of the weapons had put Jason on edge. He hadn't had any run-ins with the police before, but he had a few friends who had repeatedly told him to watch out for them. Granted, those "friends" also happened to be people who he knew from high school who had become drug dealers. In fact, thinking about it now, almost all of the mammals that he had involved himself with in his youth had ended up finding their way into some sort of legally precarious position.

Jason noticed himself daydreaming in his thoughts and shook his head to either side. What did it matter what anyone else did to earn money? He had a steady job and steady paycheck, so what everyone else did shouldn't matter to him.

As he finished changing the oil on the cruiser, he performed a quick inspection of the rest of the car, making sure that nothing was amiss. The vehicle's suspension, paint job, engine, and bumpers were fine, showing almost no signs of wear, but its tires were a little low on air, so Jason topped them off before lowering the vehicle down on the jack and rolled it out of the garage and into the parking lot, locking it before going inside and hanging the keys back in a locker with a key rack inside the garage on the hook that was designated for the parking space he had left the cruiser in.

Satisfied that the car would be ready for the cops when they got it back, he proceeded to move to the hummer. Although he would have preferred to have gone after the easier job with the elephant's car first, the bumper and correct tire size were out of stock, scheduled to be delivered the day after. With that, he set to work replacing the sections on the hummer that were in stock.

As he finished replacing the crumpled hood on the second car with a new one, he heard a commotion outside of the garage. Curious as to what was causing all of the commotion, he opened the back door to the auto shop, looking to see who or what was causing the noise. As a security precaution, Jason locked the door before proceeding further. As he stepped out into the parking lot, the raccoon saw a feline dressed in a black hoodie and dark grey sweat pants running from a fox dressed in a yellow Pawiian t-shirt and blue cargo pants chasing after him.

"Stop! ZPD!"

Nick was on his way over to the mechanic, taking the inner loop subway line up to Hill Street, where he walked for a couple of blocks until he reached an auto body shop that was better maintained than many of the buildings in the area. Many of the buildings on the biome wall with the Rainforest district were on a decline, having suffered an economic hardships when gangs decided that it would be the perfect place to set up shop for their drug deals. The rivers that flowed in from the Rainforest district provided water flow that was rich in nutrients that helped grow illicit substances, and the proximity to the city center made for easy distribution.

Part of the Mammal Inclusion Initiative was the increase in government funded jobs in the area, but many of those jobs were marred by the gangs who saw it as the government encroaching on their business. The auto shop that Nick had brought the car to was one of the establishments that was spared the tithing that some gangs tried to enforce due to how frequently many of the gang members tried to upgrade their cars. Nick was dressed in a yellow Pawiian t-shirt with dark blue cargo pants, containing his wallet, cell phone, cell phone charger, and a folding knife that he kept on his person as a form of protection.

Turning left on Forest Road and kept walking north for four blocks until he came to Wolfe Street, where he turned left and walked a few more blocks until he saw Cinerius Auto Works. He could see the police cruiser that he had come for in the front parking lot, a gleam coming off of hits hood. However, he then saw a figure in a black hoodie and dark grey sweatpants stand up from behind the vehicle, a can of dark spray paint dangling from the mammal's right paw. The mammal stood up just in time to see Nick rushing at him.

"Stop! ZPD!" Nick shouted as he ran after the hooded figure. Nick could just make out a yellow feline face with a black nose before the perpetrator of the crime turned and ran. However, they didn't get far, for an employee of the auto shop noticed the commotion going on outside of the shop. The employee tackled the fleeing figure, pinning him down. The feline flipped onto his back and brought up the spray paint can, sticking it in the employee's face and spraying it into his eyes and mouth. The employee reeled back onto the pavement, coughing and sputtering. The cat, however, wasn't able to get up in time to avoid a kick that Nick sent, knocking the spray paint can across the pavement. One of Nick's hands were already pulling out a pair of handcuffs, grabbing the cat's wrist as he flipped the criminal back onto their stomach.

Pinning the cat down with his leg, Nick grabbed his other hand, which was flailing out to the side. The vandal had almost no leverage to resist, finally submitting to being arrested.

"Are you alright?" Nick said to the employee of the auto shop. He saw the employee standing up to his left and wiping the paint off of his face. Nick finally got a good look at the employee who had helped him catch the crook. The employee was a raccoon who looked to be just past collage age, probably a Hilton Head Island Raccoon by the coloration. The raccoon was wearing a green short sleeve t-shirt that didn't have any pattern on it and a pair of silver jogging shorts, both of which looked to have numerous stains from working in the car shop.

"I'm fine. Here, let me go clean off your car," the raccoon said before spitting yellow paint onto the pavement.

"It's fine, I'll clean it back at the station," Nick said as he stood the criminal up and started to give him his legal rights. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."

"Yeah, yeah, cut the shit copper," the cat said as Nick issued to him his rights. "I've heard my rights before."

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that please?" Nick asked, secretly pulling a carrot pen out of his pocket.

"I said I know my fuckin' rights!" the feline said as Nick clicked the record button on the pen. "Do you need to clean out your ears?"

"Thank you," Nick said politely as he clicked the pen off. As Nick was moving back to his car to put the perpetrator in it, he realized that he didn't have the keys to it. Nick walked the perpetrator back to the garage.

"What was all that noise comin' from out there?" a koala asked, walking out of the garage angrily.

"Nick Wilde, ZPD. This mammal was trying to spraypaint my vehicle and your employee was kind enough to help me subdue him," Nick said as he pulled out his wallet to show his badge.

"Oh," the koala said, knowing better than to start asking questions. He didn't want to be involved in anything that could get him into trouble. Just as the koala was turning back to go back to his position on the desk, he saw his only employee walking back out of the garage with a bucket of water sloshing around in each of his paws, along with specs of paint that were still lodged in the fur on his face.

"What happened?" the koala asked his employee who was walking past.

"Nothing, just some lowlife vandal tagging for someone who's too afraid to show their face in public," the raccoon explained.

"What's the bucket for?"

"Well, it wouldn't look good if this mammal's car was tagged on our watch and we didn't do anything about it," the raccoon explained as he continued to walk towards the police cruiser.

"You're a good mammal Jay," the koala complimented before returning to the counter.

Jay walked over to the cruiser as the officer went inside to receive the vehicle's keys from the front desk. He brought the criminal with him due to his inability to leave him for fear that he would run. Jason was washing down the right driver door, where most of the paint had been distributed, when the lights of the car flashed as it was unlocked. The raccoon looked up to see the Nick and the feline walking towards the car, the fox keeping a hand on the cuffs that were binding the cat.

"Oh, you don't have to do that," Nick said as he saw the auto shop employee look towards him.

"Well if I dropped a car off at some auto shop, I'd want it to be taken care of if something happened, so I figured you would too," the raccoon said casually.

"Thanks," Nick said as he closed the door behind the cat and walked around towards the raccoon cleaning the car. "And thanks for helping me with that guy Mr. –"

"Salotor. Jason Salotor," the raccoon finished.

"Officer Nick Wilde," Nick responded. He reached into his pocket, pulling out two ten dollar bills and handing them to Jason. "Consider it a tip."

"Thanks. And if anything ever happens to your car, you know who to bring it to," Jason replied.


	2. Chapter 2

_Author's Note:_

 _I've been reading other people's fanfictions, and I noticed a few things. First of all, despite not noticing this before I started writing, I noticed after the fact that there are multiple other vigilante fanfics. Due to that also being front and center in this fanfic, it is too late to do anything about it. Also, I've noticed that nobody ever seems to have a raccoon in at least half of the stories, despite being a very common animal in many parts of the world. I don't know why that stuck out to me, maybe it's just because of too much time spent on /r/trashpandas on reddit. Anyway, the real reason I was starting to write an author's note was that I wanted to let everyone know, some of the characters in Zootopia don't have backgrounds or even first names. Thus, I shall take liberty in twisting them to my will. Hopefully that won't make the story crash and burn, but if this goes anything like my social life, everyone else will see it as just fine while I constantly go over it in my head and mentally facepalm over every detail._

 _As I'm hoping everyone is doing so far, enjoy and please leave feedback (I really should pay more attention to if I have reviews or not). As much as I would love to have a beta reader, I doubt I would be able to pump chapters out on a regular enough basis to actually warrant having one. Anyway, on to the story!_

The rest of the day went smoothly after Jason's encounter with the vandal and the cop. He fixed up the hummer and did what he could for the elephant's car. He had a nagging feeling that he knew the cop from somewhere other than the papers, but he couldn't quite remember where from.

As he walked home, he saw a ferret in a dark hoodie looking at him from out of an alley near his apartment. As he got closer, he realized that it was someone he recognized from high school. He was the guy who dealt drugs to the flunkies.

"Hey, Jay, is that you?" the ferret asked.

"Tom? Tom Ferrings?" Jason said, having not seen the ferret in years.

"The one and only!" the ferret confirmed. "I was hoping you would come by here."

"Did I piss anyone off?" Jason inquired, knowing that Ferrings was probably involved with one or more gangs. "Nah, we're good on that front. I was actually gonna ask you for a favor."

"If it's like that one favor you asked back in junior year, I'm not interested," the raccoon commented, remembering back to his high school days. Tom had asked him to hold onto a bag of Feral, a synthetic drug that caused a euphoric and addictive high, but also caused the user to become highly aggressive. The ZPD later did a drug search, and Jason, having been lucky enough to have been in bathroom at the time, ended up flushing the bag down the toilet. "I gotta keep my sheet clean if I'm ever gonna get into a collage."

"You'll be just fine Mr. Goody Two Shoes. If anything, you got a negative rap sheet," Tom said. "And besides, you still owe me for that bag."

"The bag that ZPD would have taken anyway? Hell, you're lucky I flushed when I did!" Jason said, his voice starting to rise.

"Hey, hey, keep your voice down. Don't attract attention," Ferrings said, looking around to see if anyone had noticed. "I got some goods coming in and I need someone to stand by and look around to make sure that nothing happens. You ain't gonna come in contact with anything. Just show up and call if anything happens. Besides, I'll compensate you for your time. Just call in sick to that old eucalyptus monkey."

"It's not that. I don't want to be involved in anything," the raccoon said.

"I was hoping it wouldn't come to this, but you leave me no choice. Either you help us with this or something 'unfortunate' might happen to that old shop you work at," the ferret threatened. Jason's eyes narrowed as he looked at the mammal across from him.

"Fine. One deal," Jason said. "But I don't want to get sucked into anything, you hear?"

"I can understand that," Tom said. "You's got some fantasy of getting into some fancy school and getting some fancy degree for some fancy job so you can leave this dump."

Jason bit his tongue, knowing that if he said anything it would only get him into trouble. He started to walk away, hoping Bucky and Pronk would be a bit quieter tonight, but knowing better than to hope for it.

"Hey Jay, you still got the same number?" the ferret asked as Jason was walking away.

"Yeah, everything's the same. Just don't talk about anything the courts would want to hear about over it. Only tell me where to be and when," the raccoon ordered. He didn't want anything incriminating on his call record. He turned back towards his apartment and continued back to his room. When he opened the door, he saw the same room that he had been coming to for the past few years, still empty save for the bed and the table/cabinet combo that held up his alarm clock and a small lamp.

He grabbed a pair of jogging shorts, a clean t-shirt, and underwear before walking the buildings showers, where he cleaned out the oil and the paint that he hadn't managed to remove from his fur.

"Dispatch, this is Nick Wilde, I've got a 594 caught in the act at Cinerius Auto Works. I managed to get him in cuffs and am on my way back to the station," Nick said as he drove off of the lot of the repair shop.

"Already? I thought you were just going there to get the car," came the cheerful voice of Clawhauser over the radio.

"Yeah, he was tagging the cruiser as I got there actually. Grabbed him in the act with a little help from one of the employees," Nick reported. He had a feeling that he knew the raccoon who worked at the repair shop from somewhere. At least the face rang a bell, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

Nick fiddled with the car radio for a bit. He didn't like any of the music that played, on the station, but it filled up the void left by not having a partner in the car with him. After a few minutes of aimlessly fiddling with the radio, he gave up, deciding to talk to the vandal in the back of the car.

"So, why'd you do it?" He asked to the cat in the back of his car. The mammal behind him just sat in silence. He appeared to be in his teens, and had a resentful look in his eyes. "What'd they offer you? Money? Drugs?"

"It ain't your business," the cat said, looking down.

"There's gotta be some reason. Everyone's go their reasons. Did you do it to mess with your folks? Did you do it to impress someone? A girl maybe? Were you mad at somebody and didn't have any way to let it out?" Nick continued to prod. "Did you do it because you wanted to fit in?" That last question struck a nerve.

"It ain't your fucking business why I did it!" the cat yelled. "You don't know me! You never will!"

"Are you sure?" Nick asked, lowering his voice.

"Of course I'm fucking sure! If I didn't mean it I wouldn't have said it!" the feline continued to shout. "You don't know what it's like being the only cat in the area! You don't know what it's like when no one accepts you for who you are!"

"And then you met a gang. They offered you somewhere to belong when it felt like everyone else was rejecting you," Nick said sympathetically as he looked into the rear view mirror of the car. He could see the cat hiding his face under his hood, but even then he could see a tear falling down the mammal's chin. "They accepted you. They gave you a place to belong."

The tagger didn't say anything. He only had a slight sniffle. "You're just saying that. You don't know what you're talking about," he said weakly, as if trying to convince himself.

"I know how you feel. I was one of three foxes in sixth grade, and the other two were obsessed with fucking each other's brains out. That, and they were both fennecs. I was in the gifted classes, but everyone thought that I got there by cheating because I'm a fox. The teachers always singled me out and blamed me for everything that went wrong. Hell, some of them even said it to my face, and I couldn't go to the school administration about it because it would be my word against theirs.

Before that, I tried to join Junior Ranger Scouts, but that went to shit. When I was saying the oath to join, they slapped a muzzle on me and told me they'd never trust a fox. Of course, that was after my mom had spent money that she had been scraping together for weeks to buy a uniform.

I could go on longer, but I think you get the point. When a gang member approached me and asked me to watch a drug deal, I jumped on the opportunity. It was a chance for me to actually fit in to something.

I never actually saw drugs or anything. I just made sure that no cops were coming. I had the number they had given me up on my phone all night. I was so nervous," Nick told the cat, chuckling as he remembered some of the stupid things he had done. "After a while, it started to become a common thing. Finally, the cops caught wind of a deal. They came in on his deal from the other side, so it was another guy who didn't call in time. When the bobcat I was working for was running from the cops, he pulled a gun and took me hostage to keep the cops from rushing him and stuck a loaded gun up to my head. He started shouting at the cops that if they came any closer, he'd blow my head off. When he pulled the hammer back on the revolver, the cops who had a shot on him took it. By the time I was out of there, I was crying my ass off. The gang didn't like me because they actually cared. I was just a disposable early warning device.

The rest of the gang tried to get me involved again, but I was done with them," Nick said. "I know it feels like they're all you have, but you've still got a life ahead of you. It's not too late to find something better to do with your life than pushing contraband."

By the time Nick had finished telling his story, they were pulling into the ZPD Precinct One parking lot. With traffic, it had taken him an hour to get back. He saw his partner standing by their parking spot, her foot anxiously thumping against the ground.

"Hey Carrots, how's it going?" the fox cop said as he got out of his car. He looked at his partner Judy, a grey rabbit from the aptly named town of BunnyBurrow. She was dressed in her ZPD beat cop uniform, including a Kevlar vest and various assortments of gadgets.

"Oh you know, just waiting for the car when I hear that he arrested someone without me," Judy responded.

"Yeah, a kit made a mistake. In all honesty, I've made the same mistake before myself," the fox responded.

"Getting caught doing something illegal?" Judy suggested. "I know you've been there before," she joked.

"He's just a kid who got caught up with the wrong people because there weren't any right people who would get caught up with him," Nick explained to his partner. "I just hope I can help steer him in the right direction. I can see it in his eyes, he's not a bad kid, he just has nowhere else to go."

Nick proceeded to open the door pull the kid out of the car, putting a paw on his shoulder to help steady him as he got out.

"Alright kid, I know this is kind of a tough situation. If you just stay calm and cooperate, I'll see what I can do to lighten the load on you," Nick said as Judy tapped him on his right shoulder.

 _Bad cop?_ she mouthed to him as they walked out of the ZPD garage. Nick shook his head no. He knew that the Good Cop Bad Cop routine would be the best way to get information out of the cat, but it would also alienate him. Nick didn't want the kit to see Judy as a threat. It only takes one cop to make someone afraid of cops in general.

"So how long am I gonna be in for?" the vandal asked the cops who were walking behind him.

"For tagging a police car, you'll probably get community service, maybe probation. For resisting arrest, same thing. The real question is whether or not the employee at the auto shop decides to press charges. If he does, that can range from a fine to being locked up," Nick explained.

"Can you help me get out of this?" the cat said, hoping that he could convince the sympathetic fox to let him off easy.

"I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do at this point," Nick deadpanned.

"Actually, there is something you could do to get yourself out of this some," Judy added hopefully.

"Hey Officer, um, what's your name again?" the tagger asked. He had just realized that he hadn't been paying much attention in the car until he thought that Nick was mocking him. He was too busy thinking of how he was going to get out of the situation that he had been in.

"Officer Hopps," Judy corrected.

"Sorry, the other officer," the cat clarified.

"Wilde," the Nick filled in.

"Yeah, can we talk in private?" the graffiti artist requested.

"Carrots can be trusted," Nick said. Judy was slightly annoyed by the nickname that Nick had called her, especially in front of someone who was being incarcerated, but she kept her frustration to herself.

"I don't know if I can tell you about the guys who I've been working for," the vandal admitted.

"What're you concerned about?" Judy asked, hoping to understand what had transpired in the car.

"I'm sure Wilde will fill you in," the cat replied.

"Oh, I just remembered, I never go your name," Nick interjected.

"It's Felix," the graffiti artist informed him.

"Felix what?" Nick prodded.

"Sinian. Felix Sinian," Felix said.

"Thank you. I'll see what I can do to lighten what charges I can," Nick informed Felix. He proceeded through the rest of the arrest process with Felix, getting his paws printed, hair sampled, and picture taken. From there, Nick asked if there was anyone who Felix wanted to call. He was disappointed when Felix told him that the only one who would want to hear about his arrest would be the panda who ran the orphanage that he was from. Nick proceeded to call the courts and request a defense attorney for Felix.

Despite being annoyed that Felix had tried to paint gang signs on his vehicle, he couldn't help feeling bad for the kit. He had been in the same boat before, feeling like he had no one he could trust except the people who he had been told not to trust.

"So what's special about this case?" Judy asked as she walked out the front doors of Precinct One with Nick, turning north onto Meadow street. They had both changed into their civilian clothes after their shift.

"Felix isn't the only kit who involved himself with the wrong mammals when the right mammals wouldn't accept him," Nick vaguely explained.

"What do you mean?" the rabbit inquired.

"My first hustles weren't so legal," Nick admitted, causing Judy to look at him with a questioning expression. "And don't try and hold this over my head, it's all closed cases at this point," he added sarcastically.

"What do you mean 'not so legal'?" Judy asked, not sure that she really wanted to know.

"Promise that you won't tell anybody," Nick commanded, to which Judy gave a slight nod. "I was a tagger and a smuggler for the Wetlanders. You know how I said I had been hustling since I was twelve when we first met?"

"Yeah. I thought you meant you were conning since them," Judy responded. She didn't know what he meant by smuggling, but due to the nature of the act, it unsettled her.

"When I was in school, there were only two other foxes, and they had a thing going. That, and they were both constantly making out. I was in all of the gifted classes and I had good grades, but none of my classmates wanted to be seen with me. Half of them had a thing against predators in general, but the rest hated foxes in particular. One of the popular kids in class had gotten mugged by a fox on the way to school once, and from there nobody trusted me.

Around when I was twelve, a bobcat approached me at lunch. He asked me if I wanted to make some quick money. I didn't have anything better to do after school so I accepted. The first thing I did was play lookout for a drug deal. Nothing big. From there, I kept rising through the ranks. When they had parties, I was always invited. I felt like I had actually found somewhere that I belonged."

"Did you ever, you know, use anything?" Judy asked.

"No, I didn't touch that stuff. I didn't grow up in the best neighborhood, and I had seen what it could do if you get addicted," Nick said. "Hell, I never sold it myself. I was the just one who was taking stuff from point A to point B for everyone else to do stuff with it. Sometimes they'd have me on lookout for bigger deals."

"So why'd you stop?" Judy inquired. "I know it's illegal and all, but you obviously weren't playing by the rules."

"This one time, I was watching a deal the backyard of the apartment that they were doing the deal. Another guy was on the front. They guy in front called when the MBI set up in front before storming.

The same bobcat who brought me into the whole mess, Sam Lewis, ran out the backyard with a revolver in his hand and pulled me along by the collar of my shirt. When MBI came around, shouting 'Freeze! MBI!' Sam put the gun to my head and threatened to kill me if they came any closer. When the MBI agents started to flank around either side. He was about a foot to my left, and three officers had a clear shot at him. He started shouting at them to stop moving, but they kept going. He pulled the hammer back on the revolver so those three officers unloaded into him.

After all of this time, I thought that he actually saw me as a friend, but he only used me. I bet he even would have pulled the trigger if they hadn't shot him. The police report showed that the gun had been loaded with live rounds.

I know why Felix joined the Underground Kings. He isn't physically impressive, so they don't want him as muscle or a dealer. If they operate the same way that the Wetlanders do, he's probably even an honors student in school. I know that the some gangs choose honors students who don't fit in with the others because they're the smart ones."

"I get that you can sympathize with him, but you can't let this get in the way of the case," Judy commented as they turned east towards Judy's apartment, which was a block away.

"If he's anything like I was, all he needs is some proof that the gangs don't actually care about him. If we can get that, he'll want them put away more than we will," Nick reasoned.

"That's assuming that we can get that information," Judy added.

"I'm sure we'll find something," Nick said confidently. They were just arriving at Judy's apartment building, the Grand Pangolin Arms. "Well, I'll see you at the precinct tomorrow Carrots."

"See you then," Judy replied as she went in the door. Nick waited until she was fully inside before turning back and heading towards the police station.

 _What'll happen if we can't find evidence that those guys were just using Felix?_ Nick thought to himself. _What if they really do actually care about him?_ He mentally scolded himself. The hustles that he questioned himself on were always the ones that went the worst. Nick had made a habit of not questioning his plans and improvising when needed. That had usually served him well, but now he was wondering if he really should have just thrown the book at the cat and been done with the case. It would have made Nick's life much simpler, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was going to come up that would make him glad that he had acted the way he did.

He arrived back at the precinct where he and Judy worked. He still didn't have a "home" per say. When Judy had found him under the bridge three months after she blundered through her first press conference, he had actually been planning to stay there for the night. Some of those nights, he had stayed with Finnick in the van that the fennec fox drove, but he couldn't go and ask to bunk with his old friend anymore. Half of the time, Finnick was involved in things that were borderline illegal late at night, and the fact that Nick was a cop proved to be too much of a danger for Finnick to hang out with him anymore. Although the smaller fox had never said it, he had implied it in the last texting conversation that they had, which had been at least three weeks prior.

Instead of bunking with his old associate, Nick walked into Precinct One and headed towards the garage. He swiped a keycard through an electronic lock that was on the door to an office that was connected to the garage. The office had ballistic strength glass windows that allowed anyone inside to look into the garage or the precinct lobby. Initially, Nick had thought that these security measures were overkill, but he had later learned that the keys to every police vehicle were kept inside of the room, as well as the fact that it was the only access point to the windowless armory.

"Wilde!" a loud voice called from behind Nick as he opened the door. He turned around to see a large cape buffalo glaring down at him. It was none other than the chief of precinct one, Thomas Bogo.

"Hey chief! Fancy seeing you here," the fox hollered. He wasn't sure how, but he hid his nervousness under a mask of smugness that he had trained himself to hold over the years as a conmammal.

"What are you doing?" Bogo barked at him.

"From the looks of it, opening a door," Nick replied instinctually. He hadn't gotten the hang of being respectful of authority figures yet. The glare that the chief of police gave him told him that he had given the wrong response.

"You have one sentence to explain to me why I shouldn't have you dishonorably discharged this instant!" the cape buffalo barked. Sensing that it would serve him better not to joke with the chief anymore, Nick decided to give him a straight answer.

"I'm going to be completely honest with you here chief. I don't have anywhere else that I can go," Nick admitted.

"What do you mean?" Bogo questioned. He was tired of the fox's games, and would have fired him already had he not been so instrumental in helping Judy with the Night Howlers case.

"How do I explain this," Nick thought out loud. He couldn't think of a way to say it that wouldn't sound as pathetic as his situation was, so he said it as simply as he could. "I'm homeless," the vulpine admitted.

"What?" the buffalo gasped, not expecting such a confession.

"You heard it here first folks. Police officer Nicholas Wilde is homeless," Nick said in a mock reporter voice, complete with him holding up his hand like it was a microphone.

"Have you been searching for housing?" the Chief Bogo asked. His demeanor changed fast enough to even shock himself.

"Not really. I haven't really live anywhere specific for a few years now," the fox admitted. "I'm open to suggestions if you have any though."

"Well, have you looked at getting a roommate?" Bogo suggested. "That's what a lot of the newer officers do. I hear it really helps out financially."

"You hear or you've experienced?" Nick questioned, his smirk growing ever so slightly.

"Yes, I was a young buck who couldn't afford to live on his own too," the chief admitted.

"Well, I'll be sure to look into that, but I don't exactly have a place to stay tonight other than crashing in the back seat of the cruiser, so…" Nick said.

"Go ahead," Nick's superior said dismissively. "But I want you to be up and ready in the bullpen as early as everyone else!"

"Sir, yes sir!" Nick said with a mock salute before walking into the garage and opening the back door to the cruiser that he and Judy shared.

His thoughts turned to the raccoon who had helped him take Felix in. He felt like he had heard the name Salotor before. As Nick's thoughts drifted, he thought back to middle school and the bobcat who had recruited him into the Wetlanders. Thinking back to the scene, he remembered what had been a normal school lunch for him at the time.

Nick thought back to the magnet school that had also been the local school in the area that he had lived in. When it had been built, the hope was that the wealthy mammals that would come to the magnet school would help to boost the economy in the area. However, few of those kids were in the area for anything more than school, taking a separate bus home to the neighborhoods that were full of other wealthy mammals.

On a cloudy spring day, towards the end of Nick's sixth grade year, he had been sitting at his usual table at lunch. It was the same table that all of the other kids who were in the gifted program sat at, but he had always sat at the end of the table. However, he seemed to remember another a couple of tables away, in the elementary school section of the lunch room, with black fur in the shape of a mask over his eyes. Nick remembered when the bobcat sat down, asking him if he needed any money. He told Nick that he had a job for him if he was willing. Nick looked back at the elementary table. The same masked figure was looking at him, the look in his eyes seemingly pleading him not to get involved in anything.

Nick had been skeptical at the time, not wanting to get in trouble. He had always been told that getting involved in anything illegal would put his academic career in jeopardy. His teachers and parents told him that getting good grades would be what would get him a good job that would get him out of the rundown neighborhood he was in. However, Nick had also been told by other students that the only way out of the neighborhood would be to make enough money to get out.

Finally, feeling that some of his speciest teachers would find some way to get him out of the honors programs anyway, he decided that he would take the deal.

After lunch, everyone was let outside onto the blacktop courtyard. The blacktop was split into two sections, one for the elementary students and one for the junior high students. On the border of these two sections, the two groups could talk, but neither group was allowed to cross into the other section. There were two teachers who walked up and down this line to make sure no Nick was standing by the border, hoping that he might hear anything he could hold over someone's head. The border was a common place for people to stay to talk about all sorts of nefarious activities that they planned after school, so it was the perfect place to eavesdrop.

"Hey, uh, N-nick?" said a voice from across the border. Nick lazily turned his head, which had been facing towards a group of mostly predators, towards the source of the sound. As he looked down, he saw the face of a small raccoon looking back up at him. In order to help give positive role models for the younger mammals to look up to, the first grade class sometimes would come into the sixth grade classes to work on projects with them. The first graders would do the simpler things, like cutting out shapes and drawing pictures while the sixth graders would do the more advanced things, such as creating math equations that would go along with the pictures. Nick recognized the first grader I front of him as the partner that he had in those projects, Jason Salotor.

"Hey Jay! Hows it going little man?" Nick said to the smaller mammal.

"I saw you talking to Sam," the raccoon said, skipping the formal greeting and referring to the bobcat who had convinced Nick to watch over the drug deal. "The other kids say he's in a gang."

"What, him? Nah, he's cool. He's not involved in anything bad," Nick lied. He felt guilty lieing to the smaller mammal. Jason was in a similar situation to him in the class, always being left out of everything. The only difference was that when Nick went home, he came home to his mother and father. Jason didn't have that luxury. He had been left at an orphanage before he had even opened his eyes for the first time.

"But, but I saw him selling drugs to John Hoofstein last week! I asked him about it and he hit me!" Jason told Nick as he pointed to an elk buck in third grade.

"Wait, Sam hit you?" Nick asked, suddenly on edge. A thousand different scenarios played out in his head. He only knew the other mammal since the beginning of the school year, and only through school projects, but Nick felt protective of Jason like a brother would. Now that he looked closely at the smaller mammal, he could see slight swelling in his friend's left eye. If Sam had hit the smaller mammal, the gloves were going to come off.

"No, Nick, John hit me," Jason explained.

"Oh," Nick replied, letting out a sigh of relief. "Did you hit him back?" Nick would be fine with any answer the smaller animal gave him. If he hit back, it was self-defense. If he didn't, he was avoiding fights.

"No, I didn't hit him…" the little raccoon trailed off.

"What did you do?" Nick asked, starting to worry.

"I scratched his face…" Jason admitted, looking at the ground as he did so. Almost as if on cue, the elk turn towards the center of the elementary area. He had a long scar going down his cheek. It wasn't fresh, as a bit of fur had grown over it, but the fur was thinner and less healthy.

"Do you know what he was buying?" Nick asked.

"I think it was howl," Jason told Nick. They both had heard about the drug in a seminar that every student had attended in the school's auditorium. It was produced from the leaves of a plant that wasn't native to Zootopia and caused increased aggression.

"Alright buddy. I know you were just trying to do the right thing, but keep your head down. I don't want you to get caught up in that stuff," Nick commanded. He knew that he was about to act against his own advice within a couple of days, but he didn't think about it much.

The summer after was full of illegal activity that Nick either took part in or knew about. He was accepted into his gang. He had all but forgotten about his friend who was about to start second grade when school started that fall.

The rest of the school year went surprisingly well. For the next few years, he was involved in everything that the rest of the gang members were involved in. His mother knew nothing about the activities that took place behind closed doors. She simply thought that he had made some friends at school.

Then, Nick's dad died. He had caught a bad case of pneumonia during Nick's sophomore year of high school. The Wildes didn't know many people, but at the funeral, there were five animals other than Nick and Miranda Wilde. One was his councilor. The others were all mammals who Nick knew through his underground connections. Almost none of them knew Nick's father, but they, along with Nick, were some of the newer recruits for the Wetlanders, hoping to get on Nick's good side. Looking back on it, Nick realized that they were probably there just to get on his good side due to him rising surprisingly quickly through the gang.

Not four weeks after his father's funeral, the event that brought Nick out of the gang happened. It happened just as he had described it to Judy. He was a lookout on the door that Sam used to try to escape the cops. When the cops stopped Sam there, Nick was used as little more than an attempt to get the cops to back off.

The more Nick thought about it, the more he realized that his hopes of being accepted blinded him to what he would have later realized were just attempts to make him feel further in debt to the gang. Nick sighed to himself about how naive he had been. He remembered a blanket and pillow that he had stuffed into the police car specifically for the purpose of sleeping in it. He grabbed the bedding material and set it down beside him before sifting through the glove box in front of the passenger seat, remembering that it would be a good idea to have his phone charged in the morning. He plugged the phone in before setting the pillow down and pulling a blanket over himself.

Nick hadn't noticed himself falling asleep as he spread out across the back seat, but the next thing he knew, he was waking up the next morning to the sound of his alarm blaring on his phone.


End file.
